Death's Mantle: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Revelations Book 1) (9 page)

“Yeah, but they tend to go wherever they can when traffic is bad,” Kim said with a shrug. This was the downside to having your high school situated between a hospital and a police station. There were always sirens forcing you to get out of the way. When combined with newly minted drivers, it was a recipe for disaster.

Up ahead, the ambulance got stuck in the gridlock. More sirens split the air as the ambulance driver leaned on her horn, forcing the cars in front of it to dart through the red light at the intersection. As the cars stopped around them, boxing her tiny civic in place, she started to panic. Claustrophobia seized her as she looked around, unable to move, unable to do anything as the sirens pounded through the air behind her, their owners struggling to get through the stopped traffic.

Malcom sat back against his chair and fumed. He furrowed his brow and stared straight ahead. Kim glanced at him then back at the road.

“I wish I could make them all disappear…” he stated, and his was voice low and angry. “Everyone is just in the way. If those cops and stuff hadn’t shown up, trying to barge their way through, everyone would be clear, but no, they thought they were so important they could charge through.” He waved out the window. “Good job, now we’re trapped.”

“It’s just traffic. It happens,” Kim said, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “You’re not even driving. You have no reason to be upset.” She moved up a few inches as the ambulance disappeared from sight.

“It’s not the traffic really… What’s the point of doing anything when there’s always someone who can charge into your carefully laid plans and burn all your hard work to the ground without a second thought? What recourse is there for people like that?” He smashed his hand against the door, and his lips curled into a snarl. “There’s never anyone to teach them a lesson. Someone needs to teach people not to mess with other people.” He clenched his hand into a fist so tightly his knuckles turned white and silence suddenly became a living thing in the car.

Kim swallowed and kept her eyes on the road. Mal didn’t get angry often, but when he did, well it was pretty much the scariest thing in the world. It was like everything bottled up inside him came pouring out, and the moment it touched oxygen, well, it exploded, dousing the world in flames.

Every time it happened, it made her want to run away from him and never look back but in the end, she never did. There was something about him when he was angry she found irresistible. Something that made her want to leap on him and ride him to the floor, to take his anger away with the touch of her body. Was she crazy? Probably.

“Thanks for driving,” he added after the silence between them had stretched so long it could have wrapped around the traffic jam, twice.

“It’s no problem. You know I don’t mind.” She paused for a moment, eyes still staring ahead as the cars began to ease forward, the sirens no longer blaring. “Where’s your car at anyway? I didn’t see it at your house.”

“Pop sold it. We couldn’t afford it anymore. There were some bills we had to pay,” Malcom offered, his voice was barely above a whisper as he stared angrily out the window. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“But I thought you owned it. Didn’t you work all those extra shifts so you could buy it? And didn’t you pay all the insurance and everything for it too?” Malcom merely nodded and turned completely away from her. She sighed. Like most conversations about why his father did what he did, this one was over before it started.

When she drove into the parking lot at their school a few minutes later, a smile crossed her lips as she pulled into the very front spot because there weren’t any other cars around. Normally, she couldn’t park this close to the school because all the front spots were reserved for people who won the parking lottery. Even though she’d tried ever since she was a sophomore, she still hadn’t won a privileged spot. Somehow, it always seemed like the same people won every year. Maybe it was just blind luck, but after five semesters of failure, she was starting to think the system might be rigged.

Kim threw the car into park, unbuckled her seatbelt, and got out of the car without saying a word. Malcom seemed to have calmed down, but he still hadn’t spoken since she had asked him about his car.

When Malcom got out of the car what felt like hours later, he stared off toward the gym. The short, squat building overlooked a pool that hadn’t been filled with water in at least ten years. There were always pet projects to get it repaired, but they never quite seemed to come to fruition, no matter how many donations were taken in, so the school’s swim team practiced at the gym attached to the middle school down the street.

Without saying anything, Malcom strode past her toward the gym. Anger rose like bile in the back of her throat as she watched him walk away from her without so much as a word. She had gone over to his house to talk about the cyclops, to talk about what to do, to formulate a plan that wasn’t, “wait for the creature to come back and kidnap us one by one,” but so far, all she’d managed to do was drive Malcom back to school and argue.

“Wait,” she called, but he must not have heard her because he didn’t even look back in her direction. He disappeared onto the campus a moment later, and she exhaled a breath and ran a hand through her black hair. “Why do I even care?” she asked herself for the hundredth time as she jogged after him, her footfalls booming in the silence of the unoccupied high school parking lot.

She caught up to him as he was halfway up the ladder to the gym’s roof. It was a maintenance ladder attached to the wall of the gym and started about six feet above the ground. She knew maintenance people usually brought their own ladder to go up the initial distance, but she was pretty sure Mal had gotten up there the same way he always did.

Kim grumbled to herself as Mal disappeared onto the roof without checking to see if she followed. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she should head back to her car and drive home, leaving him to do whatever it was he had planned. Somehow though, the idea of leaving him to his own devices right now rubbed her the wrong way.

“I’m here, you know. We may not be together anymore, but I’m still here, still by your side. I must be some kind of idiot.” She sighed in resignation, climbing up the three foot wall running around the edge of the gym and leaning across the gap until her hands seized the bottom rung of the ladder. She stepped across the walkway between the fence and the gym. As she put her feet on the steel handrail lining the wall of the gym, her white tennis shoes squeaked on the slick black metal.

Kim reached up another couple rungs and pulled herself up, muscles straining until she could get her knee on the bottom rung. She sat there, resting for a moment before hauling herself up the ladder. When she reached the top, Malcom stood on the edge of the roof with his back to her. Tennis balls in various shades of faded green littered the flat roof like always, but she was surprised to see a pair of crows standing off to the side, watching her with beady eyes. Sometimes there were seagulls up here, but never crows…

She shook off the chill slithering across her skin and climbed onto the roof. Malcom stared off into the distance, rubbing his thumb over his top two fingers in the same way she had when confronting Polyphemus. She glanced down at her hand and could almost feel the burning sensation that had rippled over her flesh at the time.

Kim shook off the memory and jogged toward him. Malcom didn’t so much as turn when she reached his side. The view made her heart hammer in her chest. They were so close to the edge, slipping off was a real possibility. There was no way they wouldn’t be horribly injured by a fall to the concrete below, assuming they survived at all.

“Malcom... why are we up here?” Kim looked around, feeling rather insecure because there was no one else around. “I don’t think this is a good idea. I’m not sure what the idea is, but I know it’s not a good one.”

“Have you ever wanted to fly?” Malcom asked, but she wasn’t sure he had heard her question. His eyes were very dark now, the way they were after he’d finished crying.

“As a child I have, who hasn’t? But we get over that as we age.” Kim said, reaching out and touching his arm. His skin felt like the cold unfeeling flesh of a statue.

“Maybe anyone can fly. Maybe we’re just too afraid to jump out of the nest. Maybe we’re so bogged down in our own illusions, we don’t realize we are free.” Malcom took a step forward so the toes of his beat up skater black shoes stuck out over the edge. “Maybe I can be free. I want to be free.”

“Malcom, this is insane. You can’t fly because your body is heavier than air! It’s simple physics!” She screamed at him, but he didn’t even glance in her direction. What the hell was wrong with him?

“If it wasn’t for the laws of physics, I’d be unstoppable, don’t you think?” Malcom turned his body toward her and smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Kim let go of him and took a step back. Would he throw himself over the edge? If he did, would he try to take her with him? She let out one slow breath and pasted the best smile she could on her lips. “Come on, there’s better things we could be doing with our time than committing suicide.” She reached her arm out toward him and beckoned him to come closer.

“You’re much too dark. Here I am thinking about flying, and you think I want to die.” He paused as if an idea had just occurred to him. “Such as?”

Kim felt her cheeks heat up and guilt gnaw at her throat like a worrying dog. She shut her eyes and looked down at her shoes. She wanted to tell him to come back off the edge before something bad happened, but for some reason, she wasn’t sure he’d actually listen. Ever since the encounter with the cyclops, he’d been, well, off.

After the initial encounter with Polyphemus, she had forgotten everything but her fear, the rest of the details blurred behind an opaque screen of terror. Mal, on the other hand, seemed to see things that had never been there at all.

When she looked up, he was staring at her, face blank, lips slightly parted. There was something in his eyes she hadn’t seen there before, and it made her tremble. Whatever it was, it was bad, that she was sure of.

“What are you doing?” His voice was distant and far away sounding, like he was talking from across the roof.

“Watching you,” she replied coyly, and her stomach clenched with each word. What if he got the wrong idea? That wouldn’t help things at all. Stupid. She should have said something else.

“Why?” He took a few steps toward her, and she released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Are you upset with me?” she asked, cheeks heating up.

“Not particularly. Should I be?” Concern flashed across his face, and for the first time that day, Kim got the feeling he was actually seeing her.

Kim began to nervously rub one hand with the other. “Mal, I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m scared. Right now, you’re not exactly helping.” She gestured around them. “We’re standing on the roof of the gym for Christ’s sake. It’s not exactly a normal situation, even barring,” she forced the last words out, “even barring the cyclops.”

Mal continued to rub his thumb over his two fingers. “I’m sorry… I never really thought about it.” He shrugged. “I just... feel so distracted lately. It’s like I’m caught in a permanent dream.” He gestured at their surroundings. “All of this feels like I’m dreaming, like I could just reach out and remake it with my mind.”

Malcom took a step back, his heel just brushing the edge of the building. Kim’s heart felt like it was going to explode out of her chest. If he wasn’t careful, he would fall, and it didn’t seem like he was keen on being careful. Why had she come up here after him? Why had she gone to see him at all when he had some kind of death wish?

“Malcom, there is nothing I have wanted more in the past few days than to feel safe.” Her face flushed, and she suddenly felt very vulnerable. “You standing at the edge of the gym is not helping. Please just come over here.” She held out her hand to him. “It will make me feel better.”

“Why should I?” he asked, but his voice was strangely… bland? He spun on his heel so quickly he teetered over the edge for a moment. His arms shot out for balance, and he stood like that for a long while before regaining his footing and lowering his hands to his sides.

“Because I care about you, and I don’t want you to fall off the damn gym?” she cried, anger lacing her words as she spoke. She’d nearly died when he’d teetered there and guilt crept along her skin. She hadn’t tried to save him. No, she’d been frozen in place. Scared he’d pull her over with him. She bit her lip and stared at her feet, forcing herself to take one slow breath after another.

Malcom took a step back away from the edge, but didn’t turn around. “We both know the only reason you’re around me is because of the monster. Caden can’t exactly help you with that, can he?”

“That’s not true at all, Mal.” Kim’s head dropped as anguish filled her. Why was he being like this? Couldn’t he see she still cared about him? How he still had a place in her heart? The fact that he couldn’t see how much she wanted him made her want to shrivel up and die.

“Why are you even here?” Malcom reached out and seized her hand in his. The feel of his touch was like ice, and it made her shiver. He put her hand against his chest so she could feel his heart pounding beneath his flesh. “What’s so special?”

“I still care for you, Mal.” She shook her head as tears filled her eyes. “Just because we broke up doesn’t mean I want you to throw yourself off a building. It doesn’t mean we can’t still be together… if you want.”

Without warning, Malcom pulled her against him, crushing her face against his chest. The smell of sweat and aftershave hit her nostrils, filling her with memories. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he replied, voice calm and aloof. “I just wanted to show you something.”

She looked up at him, and he grinned. “What’s that?”

“Kim, look down.”

Her heart leapt about fifteen feet just then. They weren’t on the roof of the gym anymore. They were about five feet above the roof, standing on what appeared to be perfectly solid air. She watched as he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The wind rushed past them. Time stretched on for an eternity, and she would have sworn, great green flames swirled inside him, filling him up and spilling out along his flesh.